Remembering Laetitia Yeandle, Curator of Manuscripts (1930-2024)

I think it’s fair to say that Laetitia Yeandle, who worked at the Folger Shakespeare Library for 44 years, retiring in 2001, had a cult following.

From fall 1972 until fall 2004, she taught a Folger Institute workshop called “An Introduction to Renaissance Paleography.” Her soft voice, her patience and humility, her belief in every participant’s ability to read secretary hand, made it a life-changing experience for hundreds of budding paleographers, many of whom stayed in touch with her through the years and long into her retirement, sending her postcards from far-flung repositories and offprints of articles that could not have been written without her help. 

Other people came to know and appreciate her through her co-authorship of two paleography manuals, first published in 1966 and 1992, that continue to be invaluable resources today.

Still others encountered her through her brilliantly thorough paleographical and codicological answers to their hand- and type-written queries, a chance meeting in the Tea Room, a satisfying reference phone call, an ongoing e-mail correspondence. (If you ever sent her a query by mail, we likely have it, and a copy of her reply, in the manuscript curatorial and correspondence files.)

Others knew her through her concise “Notes” in Shakespeare Quarterly, and her painstaking editorial work on The Folger Library edition of the works of Richard Hooker (1977)  The Journal of John Winthrop  (1996), and Sir Edward Dering’s “Book of Expences.”

Her Folger co-workers are forever grateful for her instinct to save and recycle. Laetitia rescued countless paper and parchment fragments and bindings from the pre-Conservation-era “bindery,” which are now housed in the manuscript collection and the subject of study in their own right. Our institutional archives are beholden to her as well — not just for the things she intentionally saved, but also for the institutional history that was incidentally saved because she took notes on the backs of old Folger memos, policies, and catalog cards.

Besides all that, she was an excellent colleague and friend. Her keen observational skills were not just limited to otiose strokes and superfluous tittles in manuscripts — she saw them in the natural world as well, and was as comfortable on her land in West Virginia and her garden in Maryland as she was in the vault, lost in a manuscript.

Laetitia died on Sunday morning, January 21, 2024. In keeping with her wishes for not making a fuss about anything relating to her, the Folger will not make a fuss. But for the sake of all her many admirers around the world, we want to recognize her huge impact on early modern English manuscript studies, in a place where people can share memories or appreciations in the Comments section.